United States Senator Bernie Sanders easily explains the relationship between Wall Street and Congress above. Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden is a prime example of what Sanders is speaking of.

Senator Wyden was elected to do the bidding of the people of Oregon on the senate floor, and before that he was a member of the US House of Representatives. However, on all economic matters where the desires and interests of Wall Street diverge from the desires and interests of the majority of Oregonians, Wall Street Ronnie has always voted for Wall Street. He is the proud owner of a 100 percent voting record on this. Here’s what makes this record incredible. He doesn’t need to do this. He’s in a safe liberal district. In order to maintain this incredible voting record on behalf of Wall Street, Wyden has carefully cultivated a false image of himself with the help of the corporate propaganda media at making himself look like a liberal.

If the majority of the voting people of Oregon discovered that Wyden has a 100 percent record of voting to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent, they would readily vote him out of office.

It’s a slow process but more and more people are coming to understand his real record, despite the best attempts of the Oregonian newspaper to misrepresent Wyden and his actions to the people of Oregon.

I’ve been to many churches over the last several months talking about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a giant trade treaty that will redistribute massive amounts of income from the 99 to the 1 percent. Wyden, like Wall Street, supports the TPP. However, people at my presentations are shocked when they hear that Wyden has a 100 percent record of voting to redistribute their jobs, their tax bases for schools, fire, social safety nets, the police and countless other public necessities to the 1 percent, and that supports doing this even more via the TPP. But they are learning the real truth about Wall Street Ron Wyden.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the largest freely redistributing your income into the pockets of the rich treaty ever signed. It will jack up prices most people pay for pharmaceutical medications, for example. Wall Street Senator’s Ron Wyden, Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell and Wall Street President Barack Obama want you to believe that they are redistributing your income and wealth to the rich on your behalf. The TPP is sitting in congress as we speak, while President Obama is sitting in the White House, anxiously awaiting senate and house approval of the treaty so he can sign the treaty, before more and more Americans realize what a massive “corporate giveaway,” the TPP is, according to US Congressman Keith Ellison. The president wants to fast track this monstrous assault on the American people. Fast track means no debate in congress, just and up and down vote. If there was a debate, word would get out and the American people would be informed as to what the TPP is, even though the so-called corporate press, otherwise and more appropriately known as the corporate propaganda machine, has done its best to keep Americans ignorant of the TPP, which the Guardian newspaper of England calls “NAFTA on Steroids.”

Big Pharma became involved in the negotiations in a big way. 600 corporate lobbyists have been involved in the intensely secret negotiations of the TPP. What has Big Pharma gotten from Obama, Wyden, Hatch, McConnell, not to mention dozens of other Republicans and Democrats, via the TPP?

“It (lobbying) is an investment that appears to have paid off. The TPP is quite friendly to drug manufacturers, strengthening patent exclusivity and providing protections against bulk government purchasing (should it hurt profits). At the behest of the pharmaceutical industry, the U.S. is also pushing to limit the ability of national regulatory agencies to support generic drug development. All of this suggests that the active lobbying has paid off. The result is going to be higher drug prices for the 99 percent, which will be demonstrated with higher Big Pharma profits, which goes to the 1 percent via higher dividends and share prices. Ergo, the TPP is a big income redistribution scam, and not just for Big Pharma. BTW, Big Pharma is already the number one most profitable industry in the United States. Now Wyden and the others want to make it even more profitable, but at your expense.

The more important question is, Why do Hatch, McConnell, Obama, Wyden and many other politicians want you and others around the world to pay for higher drug prices? Oh, that’s right. On the surface it appears that the TPP is all about profits, and Wall Street gains. And that’s true. But it’s even more true that the TPP is about political corruption on the highest levels of government. The current US government has been one of the most corrupt in history, and we’re talking about thirty years of immense political corruption. That’s why the game is rigged against the 99 percent. Wyden is a classic and most obvious example of this corruption.

Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden and Wall Street President Barack Obama have also negotiated higher prices on such things as medicine for people throughout the world. In other words, this treaty is an income redistribution scam. The 99 percent will pay the higher prices and the 1 percent shall receive it.

The treaty is also being used to undermine financial regulations, making it virtually impossible for an incoming president, such as US Senator Elizabeth Warren–if she decides to run–to pass legislation that would actually regulate the financial markets for the good of the nation, rather than allow a tiny number of rich people to redistribute income from the 99 percent to themselves, as is currently the case.

Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden was elected to represent the people of Oregon, but he always represents Wall Street and the 1 percent on all matters pertaining to redistributing income from the 99 percent to the 1 percent and to Wall Street. He has a 100 percent voting record on these issues dating all the back to his days as a US congressman, supposedly from Oregon.

Take the case of the most massive income redistribution treaty of all time, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Wyden supports it, just like he supported NAFTA and all other income redistribution treaties falsely labeled free trade agreements. Wyden has for years told Oregonians in town hall meetings that Oregon is heavily reliant on trade, but he always lies.

According to the US Census Bureau, Oregon’s exports represent only 1.2 percent of the US total. This is down from 1.4 percent since Wyden voted for the South Korea, Panama and Colombia treaties. In other words, Oregon’s economy is not nearly as dependent on trade as the senator wants us to believe. And since he’s voted for the most recent treaties, Oregon has lost a net number of jobs because of them, just like it lost a net number of jobs to NAFTA.

Furthermore, Oregon imports 7/10 of one percent of all the goods and services that are imported into the US. So Oregon is not as heavily reliant on imports as the senator would have us believe, and by a wide margin. Five states import and export more than fifty percent of all goods and services; Texas, California, Florida, New York, and Ohio. Oregon is on the opposite end of this spectrum.

So if the statistics show the senator is lying to Oregonians on this issue, then why does he lie? Perhaps it is because he serves the 1 percent. He supports so-called free trade agreements because they redistribute income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent, and Wyden has a 100 percent voting record on this issue.

When a job is shipped overseas because the senator voted to make it happen, the difference between the old higher wages in the US and the new lower wages overseas goes into the pockets of the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, surging dividends, and rising share prices. The same is true of jobs that are created overseas, because this could not have occurred in the absence of these corporate trade treaties. Their primary purpose is to redistribute income. Wyden knows this. He is not the dumb dumb little boy he pretends to be at town hall meetings.

The result of Wyden’s policies for the people of Oregon is that the income of the people of Oregon has risen in real terms 13.5 percent from 1977 to 2007. The 1 percent have received over 80 percent of this income growth. That means the income of the 1 percent grew 127 percent over the same decades, while those in the bottom 99 percent received a two percent increase in wages over the same period. The difference is because Wyden supports redistributing income via trade treaties, privatization scams, tax cuts for the rich, and lots more. In other words, Wyden’s polices are enormously successful in redistributing income.

This income maldistribution is bad for Oregon. That means only one thing. Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden has been bad for Oregon.

“Why has America forgotten the three most important economic lessons we learned in the 30 years following World War II? Before I answer that question, let me remind you what those lessons were:

First, America’s real job creators are consumers, whose rising wages generate jobs and growth. If average people don’t have decent wages there can be no real recovery and no sustained growth.

In those years, business boomed because American workers were getting raises, and had enough purchasing power to buy what expanding businesses had to offer. Strong labor unions ensured American workers got a fair share of the economy’s gains. It was a virtuous cycle.

Second, the rich do better with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy than they do with a large share of an economy that’s barely growing at all.

Between 1946 and 1974, the economy grew faster than it’s grown since, on average, because the nation was creating the largest middle class in history. The overall size of the economy doubled, as did the earnings of almost everyone. CEOs rarely took home more than forty times the average worker’s wage, yet were riding high.

Third, higher taxes on the wealthy to finance public investments — better roads, bridges, public transportation, basic research, world-class K-12 education and affordable higher education – improve the future productivity of America. All of us gain from these investments, including the wealthy.

In those years, the top marginal tax rate on America’s highest earners never fell below 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower the tax rate was 91 percent. Combined with tax revenues from a growing middle class, these were enough to build the Interstate Highway system, dramatically expand public higher education and make American public education the envy of the world.

We learned, in other words, that broadly-shared prosperity isn’t just compatible with a healthy economy that benefits everyone — it’s essential to it.

But then we forgot these lessons. For the last three decades the American economy has continued to grow but most peoples’ earnings have gone nowhere. Since the start of the recovery in 2009, 95 percent of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent.

What happened?”

Then Reich explains a lot of true stuff, while leaving out a ton of things the Clinton administration did to bring about our current state of massively unequal income distribution.

For starters, instead of defending the middle class, President Clinton joined his Wall Street masters in redistributing income from the middle to the top via free trade treaties, such as NAFTA. Take a look at the graph below.

The US free trade regime began during the 1980s, during the regime of President Ronald Reagan. Jobs, however, had been exported from the US since the 1950s. Under Clinton, and Wall Street Congressmen, such as Ron Wyden, the exportation of jobs accelerated with NAFTA, as anybody with half a brain can see from the graph above, though not Wyden, who apparently still clings to fulfill the desires of his Wall Street masters.

In this case, the financial markets are a Ponzi Scheme. They need to increase steadily in value over the course of time. Otherwise, they’ll accelerate downward. That’s the primary purpose of redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent, that is to keep the Ponzi scam known as Wall Street from collapsing, as it did during the Great Depression.

Furthermore, free trade treaties also pave the way for US corporations to create jobs overseas. Millions have been created over there rather here because of NAFTA, the South Korea free trade treaty and more.

And finally, with all the jobs begin shipped away, or created away, from the United States, that meant downward pressure on wages, benefits and salaries. And the difference between the old higher wages and the new lower wages have been redistributed from the pockets of the middle class to the already fat wallets of the 1 percent.

This is precisely why the stock markets tripled in value, more or less, during the last four years of the Clinton regime.

It’s accurate to conclude that the primary purpose of the regime of free trade is to redistribute income upward, and to lower wages, salaries and benefits.

The result of all this has been to diminish the middle class by redistributing the tax bases for our schools and social safety nets to the 1 percent, increase poverty, and corrupt democracy in the USA. And that’s just a few of the negative things this inequality has done.

Now Wall Street Ronnie Wyden wants to continue this process of redistribution via the Trans Pacific Partnership, the biggest income redistribution scam of all time in favor of Wall Street and the 1 percent.

As for the Clinton regime, there were plenty things President Clinton did to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent, but Reich has no intention of letting you in on this, like the free trade scams.

In other words, the political and economic game has been rigged, and Bill Clinton and his labor secretary Robert Reich played big roles in creating this inequality, and now Reich is trying to pretend that his boss and he played no role in creating this rigged game.

The economic game in the war against the middle class is about to become more rigged than is currently the case, and the game has been increasingly rigged over the last thirty years. The latest and most vicious assault against the American people is being led by Wall StreetPresident Barack Obama, Wall Street Republican House Speaker John Boehner, and Wall Street Senators Ron Wyden and Mitch McConnell. All of these folks are veteran class warriors that wage war against the middle class on behalf of Wall Street’s investor class. The 1 percent has used the tax cuts they’ve received over the last thirty years to turn the Federal government and the US Supreme Court into cesspools of corruption. The people above exemplify this corruption.

According the Citizen’s Trade Campaign,

“This month marked the four-year anniversary of the Obama administration’s closed-door attempts to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement. Please tell Congress four years of secretive negotiations is more than enough.

The administration missed yet another self-imposed deadline for completing the negotiations in Singapore in the beginning of December because it has been pushing the wrong agenda from the start.

Leaked TPP documents first published by Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC) two years ago — and more recent documents published by WikiLeaks and the HuffingtonPost — reveal that the administration is demanding TPP provisions that threaten family-wage jobs, a healthy environment, financial stability, access to life-saving medications, consumer safety and family farms at home and abroad. And now the administration is even urging Congress to pass “Fast Track” legislation that would enable the TPP to circumvent ordinary Congressional review, amendment and debate procedures.

Fast Track Is Coming in Early January — Action Needed Now Over the Holiday Congressional Recess

Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus and House Ways & Means Committee Chair David Camp are expected to introduce their Fast Track bill as soon as Congress reconvenes in early January. The White House recently had a full cabinet meeting to discuss how the entire administration will be pushing the bill, and corporate lobbyists are not taking the holidays off either. They’ve already begun their full court press.

It is critical that we take advantage of the week and a half before the bill’s introduction to continue pressing members of the U.S. House of Representatives especially to oppose Fast Track. If you live in Rep. DeFazio or Rep. Schrader’s district, now is the time to thank them for speaking out against Fast Track. If you live in Rep. Blumenauer or Rep. Bonamici’s district, please call their D.C. office and thank them for expressing concern over Fast Track and urge them to go further by publicly opposing Fast Track. Call Now! U.S. Capitol switchboard at 1-202-224-3121.”

Wall Street Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus and House Ways & Means Committee Chair David Camp are expected to introduce their Fast Track bill as soon as Congress reconvenes in early January. In other words, Baucus and Camp are preparing the final, crushing legislative knockout punch to the middle class by redistributing more income from the 99 to the 1 percent, and weakening the political power of the 99 while strengthening that of the 1 percent, and all via the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest income redistribution scam of all time, and which is being pushed by Goldman Sachs Obama administration.

That’s why the White House had a full cabinet meeting last week to discuss how the entire administration will be pushing the TPP, and corporate lobbyists are not taking the holidays off either. They’ve already begun their full court press.

Fast Track authority allows the Senate and the US House of representatives to vote yes or no on the TPP without debate. There will, of course, be a ton of pressure put on senators and congress people by corporate lobbyists and members of the Obama regime.

It is critical that members of the 99 percent take advantage of the two weeks before the bill’s introduction to continue pressing members of the U.S. House of Representatives especially to oppose Fast Track. Now is the time to continue thanking Members of Congress who have already spoken out against Fast Track, and to registering your deep disappointment with any Member of Congress who has not.

If you represent an organization, it is not too late to request a holiday recess meeting with a Member of Congress to discuss Fast Track. If you’re acting as an individual, please take some time to do a “drop-in” office visit and leave a note asking your Representative to commit to opposing Fast Track. You can bring a holiday card you get your friends and family to sign — or one of the recent op-eds about the TPP linked to below.

Talking points about Fast Track are attached to help prepare you for any conversations you may have with Representatives or their staff.

The Rigged Game: Corporate America and A People Betrayed

The Rigged Game: Corporate America and a People Betrayed

Wall Street is up to no good, and has been since 1980, when it took over the Republican Party, and then the Democratic Party in 1994. Income has been massively redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent via legislative scam after scam, from tax cuts for the rich to international income redistribution schemes falsely labeled as trade agreements. In The Rigged Game, John Hively exposes how this has all come about starting with a revolutionary, but simple reality, all recessions begin in the financial markets.